I have a daily relationship with my father that wakes up with me every morning.
The house where I live, where I chose to live, is my father's. It is my father’s
because he bought it and because he has shaped it and filled it with images and
with life. The last link in a chain started in the late sixteenth century. It was in
1966, in a remote (truly, at that time) place, almost inaccessible and almost
deserted of people - Marvão - that my parents bought a house that is (now) over
four hundred years old.
A house that welcomed many people, from the most varied origins and in the
most varied circumstances, in a movement that, until 1974, was tightly watched;
This house had, moreover, the honour of opening its doors to PIDE. And surely
some of the many white hairs that today dignify the head of Mrs. Joaquina, Cuco’s
wife, had their origin in those events.
The watchmen had a few reasons to watch: on three or four occasions, Marvão's
house served as headquarters and starting point for clandestine expeditions,
mostly done on foot, to the Spanish “side”, by the Galician and the Fontanheira/
Fontañera, where the Portuguese young men, refusing to obey the military call
that would force them to fight in the colonial war, would have the "first day of the
rest of their lives".